PRIZE-FIGHT WOMEN

Evening Star, Issue 17922, 18 March 1922, Page 11

PRIZE-FIGHT WOMEN

DEAN ON SPORTING DEGENERACY.

Modern tendencies in sport were reviewed by Bishop Welldon, the Dean of Durham, in the course of an interview upon a recent incident in New York, where a firm of dealers in fur, wishing to advertise itself, turned an unhappy fox, with its jaws tightly bound with twine, loose in Fifth avenue. The fox, said Bishop Welldon, fled in terror along the street with a mob of hooligans running after it, took shelter under a motor car, was kicked out and chased afresh, until at last it was run over by a motor car and one of its legs broken. “If that is sport,” said the Dean, ‘ then God forbid that any decent man should covet the name of sportsman. But I am afraid it is only an instance of a certain moral degeneracy which is threatening to come over .civilised society, whether as a result of the war, of a laxity of moral principles, or of the alienation of the Christian moral law of charity. “ For my part I am sorry that even prize fights have since the war been renewed under august patronage, and still more that they should bo attended by women as well as by men, for the boxing matches are simply the old prize fights, only with greater publicity and higher pecuniary stakes. . . , “I read of such a boxing match when one of the combatants was bleeding all over his face. The women who were present showed no emotion except delight, and one particularly brutal specimen oi womanhood was following the'fight blow by blow with a movement of her hands. “ It is high time, I think, that women, if they are not to lose the honor paid to their sox. should be debarred or should debar themselves from attendance at brutal exhibitions like prize fights. For when the womanhood of a nation loses pity, which is perhaps its sovereign grace, the nation begins to sink, and the end of its dignity—indeed of its prosperity—may not be far off.” '